I am sorry Epistle, I meant no "bad mouthing"! My wonderful Grandmother was a devout Catholic her whole life, and I totally expect to see her in Heaven. And, not because she belonged to ANY certain denomination, but because she exhibited every single fruit of the Spirit and thoroughly believed in the core Christian beliefs. My personal experience is just that I was not getting fed and taught the Word of God. I liken myself to belonging to Church WITHOUT Religion...I attend services and totally enjoy our worship and am learning so much. Fellowship is wonderful where I go and I have no denomination. Jesus plus nothing.
Please do not take what I said personally because it was so not meant to be a bash.
-nancy
You should know as well as I do there is more "Bible" read aloud in a single Mass than a month of Protestant services. I've been in all kinds of Protestant services and there is rarely any order to the scripture readings, so forgive me if I find your testimony full of holes.
A one sentence summary was never intended to be a comprehensive treatise, so pulling it in so many directions is hardly fair.
2. Alternate: I am a Catholic because I sincerely believe, by virtue of much cumulative evidence, that Catholicism is
true, and that the Catholic Church is the visible Church divinely-established by our Lord Jesus, against which the gates of hell cannot and will not prevail (
Mt 16:18), thereby possessing an
authority to which I feel bound in Christian duty to submit.
3. 2nd Alternate: I left Protestantism because it was seriously deficient in its interpretation of the Bible (e.g., "faith alone" and many other "Catholic" doctrines - see evidences below), inconsistently selective in its espousal of various Catholic Traditions (e.g., the Canon of the Bible), inadequate in its ecclesiology, lacking a sensible view of Christian history (e.g., "Scripture alone"), compromised morally (e.g., contraception, divorce), and unbiblically schismatic, anarchical, and relativistic. I don't therefore believe that Protestantism is all bad (not by a long shot), but these are some of the major deficiencies I eventually saw as fatal to the "theory" of Protestantism, over against Catholicism. All Catholics must regard baptized, Nicene, Chalcedonian Protestants as Christians.
4. Catholicism isn't formally
divided and sectarian (
Jn 17:20-23;
Rom 16:17;
1 Cor 1:10-13).
5. Catholic
unity makes Christianity and Jesus more believable to the world (
Jn 17:23).
6. Catholicism, because of its unified, complete, fully supernatural Christian vision, mitigates against
secularization and humanism.
7. Catholicism avoids an unbiblical
individualism which undermines Christian community (e.g.,
1 Cor 12:25-26).
8. Catholicism avoids
theological relativism, by means of dogmatic certainty and the centrality of the papacy.
9. Catholicism avoids
ecclesiological anarchism - one cannot merely jump to another denomination when some disciplinary measure or censure is called for.
10. Catholicism formally (although, sadly, not always in practice) prevents the theological
relativism which leads to the uncertainties within the Protestant system among laypeople.
11. Catholicism rejects the
"State Church," which has led to governments dominating Christianity rather than vice-versa.
12. Protestant State Churches greatly influenced the rise of
nationalism, which mitigated against universal equality and Christian universalism (i.e., Catholicism).
13. Unified Catholic Christendom (before the 16th century) had not been plagued by the tragic
religious wars which in turn led to the "Enlightenment," in which men rejected the hypocrisy of inter-Christian warfare and decided to become indifferent to religion rather than letting it guide their lives.
14. Catholicism retains the elements of
mystery, supernatural, and the
sacred in Christianity, thus opposing itself to
secularization, where the sphere of the religious in life becomes greatly limited.
15. Protestant individualism led to the
privatization of Christianity, whereby it is little respected in societal and political life, leaving the "public square" barren of Christian influence.
16. The secular false dichotomy of
"church vs. world" has led committed orthodox Christians, by and large, to withdraw from politics, leaving a void filled by pagans, cynics, unscrupulous, and power-hungry. Catholicism offers a framework in which to approach the state and civic responsibility.
17. Protestantism leans too much on mere
traditions of men (every denomination stems from one Founder's vision. As soon as two or more of these contradict each other, error is necessarily present).
18. Protestant churches (esp. evangelicals), are far too often guilty of putting their pastors on too high of a pedestal. In effect,
every pastor becomes a "pope," to varying degrees (some are "super-popes"). Because of this, evangelical congregations often experience a severe crisis and/or split up when a pastor leaves, thus proving that their philosophy is overly man-centered, rather than God-centered.
19. Protestantism, due to lack of real authority and dogmatic structure, is tragically prone to accommodation to the
spirit of the age, and
moral faddism.
20. Catholicism retains
apostolic succession, necessary to know what is true Christian apostolic Tradition. It was the criterion of Christian truth used by the early Christians.
21. Many Protestants take a dim view towards
Christian history in general, esp. the years from 313 (Constantine's conversion) to 1517 (Luther's arrival). This ignorance and hostility to Catholic Tradition leads to theological relativism, anti-Catholicism, and a constant, unnecessary process of "reinventing the wheel."
22. Protestantism from its inception was
anti-Catholic, and remains so to this day (esp. evangelicalism). This is obviously wrong and unbiblical if Catholicism is indeed Christian (if it isn't, then - logically - neither is Protestantism, which inherited the bulk of its theology from Catholicism). The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is not anti-Protestant.
23. The Catholic Church accepts the authority of the great
Ecumenical Councils (see, e.g.,
Acts 15) which defined and developed Christian doctrine (much of which Protestantism also accepts).
24. Most Protestants do not have
bishops, a Christian office which is biblical (
1 Tim 3:1-2) and which has existed from the earliest Christian history and Tradition.
25. Protestantism has no way of
settling doctrinal issues definitively. At best, the individual Protestant can only take a head count of how many Protestant scholars, commentators, etc. take such-and-such a view on Doctrine X, Y, or Z. There is no unified Protestant Tradition.
26. Protestantism arose in 1517, and is a "Johnny-come-lately" in the history of Christianity. Therefore it cannot possibly be the "restoration" of "pure", "primitive" Christianity, since this is ruled out by the fact of its
absurdly late appearance. Christianity must have historic continuity or it is not Christianity. Protestantism is necessarily a "parasite" of Catholicism, historically and doctrinally speaking.
27. The Protestant notion of the
"invisible church" is also novel in the history of Christianity and foreign to the Bible (
Mt 5:14;
Mt 16:18), therefore untrue.
28. When Protestant theologians speak of the teaching of early Christianity (e.g., when refuting "cults"), they say "the Church taught . . ." (as it was then unified), but when they refer to the present they instinctively and inconsistently refrain from such terminology, since
universal teaching authority now clearly resides only in the Catholic Church.
29. The Protestant principle of
private judgment has created a milieu (esp. in Protestant America) in which (invariably) man-centered "cults" such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, and Christian Science arise. The very notion that one can "start" a new, or "the true" Church is Protestant to the core.
30. The lack of a
definitive teaching authority in Protestant (as with the Catholic magisterium) makes many individual Protestants think that they have a direct line to God, notwithstanding all of Christian Tradition and the history of biblical exegesis (a
"Bible, Holy Spirit and me" mentality). Such people are generally under-educated theologically, unteachable, lack humility, and have no business making presumed "infallible" statements about the nature of Christianity.
